A global health crisis is in the making: 30 new diseases have emerged in the last 20 years: the time for action is now
Jordan Kassalow, Senior Fellow on the Council on Foreign Relations, May 2001, “Why Health is Important to U.S. Foreign Policy,” Council on Foreign Relations and Milbank Memorial Fund, __http://www.milbank.org/reports /Foreignpolicy.html__. [G. Zhang]
There are several reasons to believe that thedirectthreat to Americans is rising. First, infectious diseases that once appeared to be well controlled are resurgent globally. This can be attributed to factors including a global breakdown in public health infrastructure, increased environmental degradation, and increased urbanization. In the past 20 years, approximately 30 new diseases have emerged, including HIV/AIDS, Ebola virus, hepatitis C, Hanta virus (in the southwestern U.S.), and the virulent "flesh-eating" version of Group A streptococcus. Simultaneously, several of humanity's oldest and most lethal scourges—tuberculosis, malaria, and cholera—have gathered strength. For example, in 1999 there were 8.4 million new cases of tuberculosis worldwide, up from 8 million in 1997 (Vidyashaankar 2001). Six infectious diseases—HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, pneumonia, diarrheal infections, and measles—account for half of all premature deaths worldwide (World Health Organization 1999). In total, 54 million people died of infectious diseases in 1998.
Lack of resources is the main problem is Surveillance Nsubuga et al, Licensee BioMed Central Ltd, 2-27-02(http://www.pubmedcentral.nih .gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid =140011#b14)
Contributions that were identified and attributable to the presence of AFP surveillance programs indicate that polio-eradication programs have gone beyond a purely vertical approach (i.e., disease-specific) toward one that is more horizontal (i.e., systems development). Improvements of infrastructure, capacity building, and provision of personnel can be used to develop the overall surveillance system for infectious diseases as long as the categorical program policies clearly support this approach. A lack of resources (e.g., staff, funds, vehicles, or fuel) were the main constraints to infectious disease surveillance that were identified in the survey – interestingly, training was not identified as a top constraint, possibly indicating that trained personnel already exist, at least within the AFP surveillance program. Managers of categorical programs are often uneasy regarding entrusting others with gathering surveillance data that are crucial to targeting and evaluating their programs. Therefore, ongoing training monitoring and periodic external evaluations should provide the quality assurance and credibility that integrated surveillance and response programs will need to reassure managers that they are basing decisions on reliable information.
Thus, the Plan:
The United States Federal Government should fund the CDC to create and expand disease surveillance centers and satellites in sub-Saharan Africa through GDD.
O2: THE ADVANTAGES
A1: EMERGING DISEASES
Disease surveillance is vital to controlling infectious diseases
Mark S. Smolinski et al, Margaret A. Hamburg, and Joshua Lederberg, Committee on Emerging Microbial Threats to Health in the 21st Century , 03, Microbial Threats to Health: Emergence, Detection, and Response. [Ogi] The need to strengthen global infectious disease surveillance is vital. As noted earlier, in addition to the United States’ humanitarian objective of aiding countries in crisis, it is critical to U.S. national security that quality population-based data on disease burden and trends in the developing world be obtained through global surveillance (Hyder and Morrow, 2000). Yet disease burden estimates and projections are often based on only fragmentary data (Murray and Lopez, 1997). The reality in many developing societies is that deaths and births are not recorded, and a formal system of medical care is unavailable to most of the population (Cooper et al., 1998). Health care infrastructures that lack simple diagnostic tests for diseases such as tuberculosis or that have insufficient resources to perform diagnostic tests add to the lack of knowledge of disease burden. Developing countries in which high proportions of the population experience morbidity and/ or mortality from infectious diseases may be the least likely to be encompassed by official statistics because of this lack of resources. Basic health indices, such as death rates or causes of death, are unknown in such contexts. Health ministries may generate health reports, but the data are generally unreliable. Such numbers have been used as the basis for broad policy recommendations; if the numbers are incorrect, however, the resulting policies can be damaging. In addition to monitoring disease burden, surveillance efforts should be expanded and diversified to include the capacity to recognize previously unknown illnesses or unusual outbreaks of disease that may have global significance. With today’s rapid and often mass global movements of people, animals, and goods, the transnational spread of infectious diseases can occur quickly and easily. Global surveillance, especially for newly recognized infectious diseases, is therefore crucial in responding to and containing microbial threats before isolated outbreaks develop into regional or worldwide epidemics. U.S. agencies have been working with WHO and other partners to achieve the goal of a comprehensive global surveillance system, and efforts to date are aptly described as creating a “network of networks” (see Figure 4-1). In Europe, countries have made significant progress through the development of networks such as those for travel-related Legionnaires’ disease, enteric organisms (Enter-net), and drug resistance. The United States has also supported efforts to establish regional networks. An example is DOD’s support for laboratory-based surveillance in the 21 countries of the Caribbean Epidemiology Center, in collaboration with the Pan American Health Organization and CDC. Likewise, CDC and others have worked in many areas to assist regional surveillance networks. Examples include the Amazon and Southern Cone networks, which encompass eight laboratories. Control of diseases is critical to ensure there is no economic collapse, terrorist attacks or poverty.
Roger Breeze, keyway speaker at the Manchester Conference, 3-14-07 (http://www.warmwell.com /06feb10breezetalks.html) [robin gray]
A manifesto for global livestock epidemic disease eradication in our lifetimes. Since 1999, there have been devastating epidemics of foot and mouth disease (FMD) in Taiwan and the United Kingdom - at a total cost of some $40 billion - hog cholera in the Netherlands and Rift valley fever in Saudi Arabia and Yemen, along with lesser outbreaks of FMD in Japan, South Korea, Russia and the European Union: all these countries are normally free of these diseases. These epidemics were caused by introduction of infected animals or animal products from the many other countries in South America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia that are persistently infected with FMD and other dangerous animal diseases, some of which also infect humans. In these countries, dramatic outbreaks of disease are unusual - instead, insidious infections limit or prevent international trade, sap the animal agricultural economy and contribute to the persistence of hunger and poverty. These reservoirs of infection also hang like swords of Damocles over the livestock industries, wildlife populations and rural communities of the European Union, Australia, New Zealand and North America that are totally susceptible to accidental or deliberate introduction of disease, as we saw so recently in the United Kingdom. Yet despite efforts to strengthen inspection and interdiction at national borders and emergency responses internally, the United Kingdom, the European Union and the United States are no more secure today from an outbreak of FMD than they were before the recent catastrophes. And they will not be truly secure until these disease threats have been eradicated or controlled at their sources in South America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. Developed nation policymakers and their constituencies have not realized that their best defense at home is disease eradication abroad, that the means to eradicate and control these diseases are now available and that disease elimination will spur international trade, reduce poverty and promote economic development over more than half the globe. This is the moment to persuade North America, the European Union, Australia and New Zealand that their national security and economic interests coincide with those of less-developed nations. We can protect and improve the health of livestock and the economic security of people all over the world by applying the ingenuity and focus of the private sector to seemingly intractable international animal disease problems of the highest importance for which solutions would have lasting global benefits. It is in the self-interest and national security of developed nations to assist in global disease eradication to protect their own economies against natural infection and terrorist attacks, to promote economic development and unrestricted trade, to complement new global public health programs and to reduce hunger and poverty.
Poverty is a Form of Structural Violence that is Equivalent to an Ongoing Nuclear War and is the Root Cause of All Other Violence
Gilligan,96(James, professor of Psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School, Director of the Center for the Study of Violence, and a member of the Academic Advisory Council of the National Campaign Against Youth Violence. Violence: Our Deadly Epidemic and its Causes.. P. 191-196 )
The deadliest form of violence is poverty. You cannot work for one day with the violent people who fill our prisons and mental hospitals for the criminally insane without being forcible and constantly reminded of the extreme poverty and discrimination that characterizes their lives. Hearing about their lives, and about their families and friends, you are forced to recognize the truth in Gandhi’s observation that the deadliest form of violence is poverty. Not a day goes by without realizing that trying to understand them and their violent behavior in purely individual terms is impossible and wrong-headed. Any theory of violence, especially a psychological theory, that evolves from the experience of men in maximum security prisons and hospitals for the criminally insane must begin with the recognition that these institutions are only microcosms. They are not where the major violence in our society takes place, and the perpetrators who fill them are far from being the main causes of most violent deaths. Any approach to a theory of violence needs to begin with a look at the structural violence in this country. Focusing merely on those relatively few men who commit what we define as murder could distract us from examining and learning from those structural causes of violent death that are far more significant from a numerical or public health, or human, standpoint. By “structural violence” I mean the increased rates of death, and disability suffered by those who occupy the bottom rungs of society, as contrasted with the relatively lower death rates experienced by those who are above them. Those excess deaths (or at least a demonstrably large proportion of them) are a function of class structure; and that structure is itself a product of society’s collective human choices, concerning how to distribute the collective wealth of the society. These are not acts of God. I am contrasting “structural” with “behavioral violence,” by which I mean the non-natural deaths and injuries that are caused by specific behavioral actions of individuals against individuals, such as the deaths we attribute to homicide, suicide, soldiers in warfare, capital punishment, and so on. Structural violence differs from behavioral violence in at least three major respects. *The lethal effects of structural violence operate continuously, rather than sporadically, whereas murders,suicides, executions, wars, and other forms of behavioral violence occur one at a time. *Structural violence operates more or less independently of individual acts; independent of individuals and groups (politicians, political parties, voters) whose decisions may nevertheless have lethal consequences for others. *Structural violence is normally invisible, because it may appear to have had other (natural or violent) causes. [Continued… (9 Paragraphs Later…)] The finding that structural violence causes far more deaths than behavioral violence does is not limited to this country. Kohler and Alcock attempted to arrive at the number of excess deaths caused by socioeconomic inequities on a worldwide basis. Sweden was their model of the nation that had come closes to eliminating structural violence. It had the least inequity in income and living standards, and the lowest discrepancies in death rates and life expectancy; and the highest overall life expectancy in the world. When they compared the life expectancies of those living in the other socioeconomic systems against Sweden, they found that 18 million deaths a year could be attributed to the “structural violence” to which the citizens of all the other nations were being subjected. During the past decade, the discrepancies between the rich and poor nations have increased dramatically and alarmingly. The 14 to 18 million deaths a year caused by structural violence compare with about 100,000 deaths per year from armed conflict. Comparing this frequency of deaths from structural violence to the frequency of those caused by major military and political violence, such as World War II (an estimated 49 million military and civilian deaths, including those by genocide—or about eight million per year, 1939-1945), the Indonesian massacre of 1965-66 (perhaps 575,000) deaths), the Vietnam war (possibly two million, 1954-1973), and even a hypothetical nuclear exchange between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. (232 million), it was clear that even war cannot begin to compare with structural violence, which continues year after year. In other words, every fifteen years, on the average, as many people die because of relative poverty as would be killed by the Nazi genocide of the Jews over a six-year period. This is, in effect, the equivalent of an ongoing, unending, in fact accelerating, thermonuclear war, or genocide, perpetrated on the weak and poor every year of every decade, throughout the world. Structural violence is also the main cause of behavioral violence on a socially and epidemiologically significant scale (from homicide and suicide to war and genocide). The question as to which of the two forms of violence—structural or behavioral—is more important, dangerous, or lethal is moot, for they are inextricably related to each other, as cause to effect.
Malaria decreases Africa’s labor force, crippling their economy
Jeffrey Sachs and Pia Malaney, February 7 2002. Center for International Development, John F. Kennedy SCHOOL OF Government, Harvard University, “The economic and social burden of malaria,” Insight Review Articles, __http://www.rbm.who.int/cmc _upload/0/000/015/330/415680a _r.pdf__. [G. Zhang]
Industries such as tourism are particularly hard hit by malaria transmission, as is becoming clearer in countries such as Mozambique and South Africa as they attempt to encourage investment in these areas with limited success. Investments in all sorts of production — in mining, agriculture and manufacturing — may similarly be crippled if the labour force faces a heavy disease burden, or if the burden raises the costs of attracting the needed labour to a malarious region. In an economic era in which international trade and finance is critical for economic development, these adverse effects on foreign trade and investment are likely to be of tremendous macroeconomic importance.
More economic instability due to new diseases will cause an African nuclear war
Dr. Jeffrey Deutsch, PhD in Economics from George Mason University, November 18, 2002, http://www.rabidtigers.com/
The Rabid Tiger Project believes that a nuclear war is most likely to start in Africa. Civil wars in the Congo (the country formerly known as Zaire), Rwanda, Somalia and Sierra Leone, and domestic instability in Zimbabwe, Sudan and other countries, as well as occasional brushfire and other wars (thanks in part to "national" borders that cut across tribal ones) turn into a really nasty stew. We've got all too many rabid tigers and potential rabid tigers, who are willing to push the button rather than risk being seen as wishy-washy in the face of a mortal threat and overthrown. Geopolitically speaking, Africa is open range. Very few countries in Africa are beholden to any particular power. South Africa is a major exception in this respect - not to mention in that she also probably already has the Bomb. Thus, outside powers can more easily find client states there than, say, in Europe where the political lines have long since been drawn, or Asia where many of the countries (China, India, Japan) are powers unto themselves and don't need any "help," thank you. Thus, an African war can attract outside involvement very quickly. Of course, a proxy war alone may not induce the Great Powers to fight each other. But an African nuclear strike can ignite a much broader conflagration, if the other powers are interested in a fight. Certainly, such a strike would in the first place have been facilitated by outside help - financial, scientific, engineering, etc. Africa is an ocean of troubled waters, and some people love to go fishing. Asia is a close second, due to the competition of major powers. For example, in an Indo-Paki confrontation, China may be tempted to side with Pakistan, since China and India are major nuclear powers sharing a long border. However, the Asian powers are basically stable internally, at least for now. The things to watch for are domestic economic and political instability in a nuclear power, the spread of nuclear weapons to new countries and new national antagonisms and great-power ties either weak or nonexistent enough to enable opportunistic alliances and destabilization, or strong enough that the great powers feel compelled to follow their client states.
A2: BIOWEAPONS
Disease surveillance will preclude the rise of bioterrorism by nipping diseases like SARS in the bud
Tom Davis, Committee on Government Reform, April 25, 2006, 109th Congress of the House of Representatives, Report 109-436, “Strengthening Disease Surveillance, __http://frwebgate.access.gpo .gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname �3�109_cong_reports&docid�4�f :hr436.pdf__” [G. Zhang]
The spread of the H5N1 virus and the threat of pandemic influenza is the most recent reminder of the need for sensitive, vigilant disease surveillance. In 2002, the world conducted an involuntary,
live-fire exercise of public health capacity against bioterrorism. Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome [SARS] emerged from the microbial hothouse of the Far East through the same vulnerabilities and
vectors terrorists would exploit to spread weaponized, genetically altered disease. The global response to SARS underscores the vital significance of sensitive disease surveillance in protecting public health from natural, and unnatural, outbreaks. It also discloses serious gaps and persistent weaknesses in international and U.S. health monitoring.
Bioweapons threaten extinction
Richard Ochs, former Director of the Maryland Safe Energy Coalition, 6/9/02, “Biological Weapons Must Be Abolished Immediately”, **__http://www.freefromterror.net /other_articles/abolish.html__**. [G. Zhang]
Of all the weapons of mass destruction, the genetically engineered biological weapons, many without a known cure or vaccine, are an extreme danger to the continued survival of life on earth. Any perceived military value or deterrence pales in comparison to the great risk these weapons pose just sitting in vials in laboratories. While a "nuclear winter," resulting from a massive exchange of nuclear weapons, could also kill off most of life on earth and severely compromise the health of future generations, they are easier to control. Biological weapons, on the other hand, can get out of control very easily, as the recent anthrax attacks has demonstrated. There is no way to guarantee the security of these doomsday weapons because very tiny amounts can be stolen or accidentally released and then grow or be grown to horrendous proportions. The Black Death of the Middle Ages would be small in comparison to the potential damage bioweapons could cause. Abolition of chemical weapons is less of a priority because, while they can also kill millions of people outright, their persistence in the environment would be less than nuclear or biological agents or more localized. Hence, chemical weapons would have a lesser effect on future generations of innocent people and the natural environment. Like the Holocaust, once a localized chemical extermination is over, it is over. With nuclear and biological weapons, the killing will probably never end. Radioactive elements last tens of thousands of years and will keep causing cancers virtually forever. Potentially worse than that, bio-engineered agents by the hundreds with no known cure could wreck even greater calamity on the human race than could persistent radiation. AIDS and ebola viruses are just a small example of recently emerging plagues with no known cure or vaccine. Can we imagine hundreds of such plagues? Human extinction is now possible.
The CDC should take the lead in preventing bioterrorism
Tom Davis, Committee on Government Reform, April 25, 2006, 109th Congress of the House of Representatives, Report 109-436, “Strengthening Disease Surveillance, __http://frwebgate.access.gpo .gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname �5�109_cong_reports&docid�6�f :hr436.pdf__” [G. Zhang]
The threat of bioterrorism as well as new emerging diseases such as SARS makes it imperative local and state public health departments are modernized and disease surveillance is strengthened. The CDC is responsible for providing ‘‘national and international leadership in the public health and medical communities to detect, diagnose, respond to, and prevent illnesses including those that occur as a result of a deliberate release of biological agents,’’ and is therefore responsible for setting this timeframe.6
A3: TERRORISM
US international health efforts are the most effective counter-terrorism measure
Richard Horton, October 6, 2001, “Public health: a neglected counterterrorist measure,” The Lancet, Vol. 358, Issue 9288, http://www.sciencedirect.com /science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi �9�B6T1B-444R2FT-2&_user�10�4257664 &_coverDate=10%2F06%2F2001& _rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search& _sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000022698 &_version=1&_urlVersion=0& _userid=4257664&md5=bcb89e59cca 7501e401678a414aa1a3d. [G. Zhang]
Terrorism is a consequence of wider political and social change. Terrorism thrives especially in countries enduring state failure. Afghanistan, Colombia, Northern Ireland, Sudan, the Palestinian territories, Iraq, and Algeria all harbour terrorist groups. All have varying degrees of state failure, where states exist. The current US response to Afghanistan fails to recognise this reality. Military escalation, the language of retaliation, and possibly even covert strikes have been the main elements of American foreign policy. Bush has also asked for “the cooperation of citizens within Afghanistan who may be tired of having the Taliban in place”.__3__ This incitement to overthrow the existing government is a disappointingly crude attempt at nation-building, especially given the humanitarian disaster facing Afghanistan. What is missing? Medicine and public health have important if indirect parts to play in securing peace and stability for countries in collapse. Health could be the most valuable counterterrorist measure yet to be deployed.
African terrorism is growing more severe – apocalypse imminent
Princeton N. Lyman and J. Stephen Morrison, January-February 2004, “The Terrorist Threat in Africa,” Foreign Affairs, __http://www-stage.foreignaffairs .org/20040101faessay83108 /princeton-n-lyman-j-stephen -morrison/the-terrorist-threat -in-africa.html?mode=print__. [G. Zhang]
At the same time, however, the United States has failed to recognize the existence of other, less visible, terrorist threats elsewhere on the African continent. Countering the rise of grass-roots extremism has been a central part of U.S. strategy in the Middle East, but the same has not generally been true for Africa. In Nigeria, for example, a potent mix of communal tensions, radical Islamism, and anti-Americanism has produced a fertile breeding ground for militancy and threatens to tear the country apart. South Africa has seen the emergence of a violent Islamist group. And in West and Central Africa, criminal networks launder cash from illicit trade in diamonds, joining forces with corrupt local leaders to form lawless bazaars that are increasingly exploited by al Qaeda to shelter its assets. As the war on terrorism intensifies in Kenya and elsewhere, radicals might migrate to more accessible, war-ravaged venues across the continent.
The Bush administration must deal with these threats by adopting a more holistic approach to fighting terrorism in Africa. Rather than concentrate solely on shutting down existing al Qaeda cells, it must also deal with the continent's fundamental problems -- economic distress, ethnic and religious fissures, fragile governance, weak democracy, and rampant human rights abuses -- that create an environment in which terrorists thrive. The United States must also eliminate the obstacles to developing a coherent Africa policy that exist in Washington. Counterterrorism programs for the region are consistently underfinanced, responsibilities are divided along archaic bureaucratic lines, there is no U.S. diplomatic presence in several strategic locations, and long-term imperatives are consistently allowed to be eclipsed by short-term humanitarian demands. The war on terrorism might make officials realize what they should have known earlier: that Africa cannot be kept at the back of the queue forever if U.S. security interests are to be advanced.
Terrorism causes extinction
Kirkus Reviews, 1999, -Terrorism-
Fanaticism-Arms-Destruction/dp /product-description/0195118162 . [robin]
Terrorism is nothing new. Fanatical groups have been wreaking havoc from time immemorial. Today two things have changed that together transform terrorism from a nuisance'' to one of the gravest dangers facing mankind.'' First terrorists be they Islamic extremists in the Middle East, ultranationalists in the US, or any number of other possible permutations seem to have changed from organized groups with clear ideological motives to small clusters of the paranoid and hateful bent on vengeance and destruction for their own sake. There are no longer any moral limitations on what terrorists are
willing to do, who and how many they are willing to kill. Second, these unhinged collectivities now have ready access to weapons of mass destruction. The technological skills are not that complex and the resources needed not too rare for terrorists to employ nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons where and when they wish. The consequences of such weapons in the hands of ruthless, rootless fanatics are not difficult to imagine. In addition to the destruction of countless lives, panic can grip any targeted society, unleashing retaliatory action which in turn can lead to conflagrations perhaps on a world scale. To combat such terrorist activities, states may come to rely more and more on dictatorial and authoritarian measures. In short, terrorism in the future may threaten the very foundations of modern civilizations. On all of this, Laqueur is quite convincing. Useful, too, is his elaboration on the nature of the various terrorist threats we face. Yet he too often falls back on questionable, if not offensive, opinion. He asserts, for instance, that in non-Western countries ``human lives count for less,'' and so the danger of terrorism in these countries is greater. This is simply unacceptable doggerel. Useful in pointing out the terrorist danger, but be wary of the author's more outlandish pronouncements.
A4: DEMOCRACY
US global health assistance increases its soft power leadership
Ilona Kickbusch, Ph.D at Yale University School of Medicine and the World Health Organization, November/December 2002, Health Affairs: The Policy journal of the Public Health Sphere, __http://content.healthaffairs .org/cgi/content/full/21/6/131__. [G. Zhang]
In his recent analysis of U.S. foreign policy, Joseph Nye, dean of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, argued that the United States must come to terms with what he calls the paradox of American power: The stronger the United States is, the more it must orient itself toward a new global community. It must rely less on traditional measures of power such as military strength and more on the "soft" power that comes from culture, values, and institutions.1 This differentiation between hard and soft power has been a major subtext of all discussions on America’s role in the new global environment since the fall of the Berlin Wall and in particular in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
In the face of a global health crisis, Nye’s paradox can help to define a new role that America can play. This role would imply strengthening the U.S. soft-power role in health by moving beyond both a national-interest paradigm and an international disease-control model based on macroeconomic arguments. A key dimension of this new global health strategy would be to address the larger issues of social justice, democracy, and law that are paramount to health in the context of globalization and that are part of U.S. political tradition. The global community expects the United States to take soft-power leadership. The repeated suggestion of a new Marshall Plan or the call to contribute more generously to the new Global Fund on AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria is not just about more dollars. It is the plea of the global community that the United States apply the strength of vision and determination that it has shown in other historical crises to health and development today.2
Soft power is key to democracy promotion
Kurt M. Campbell & Michael E. OÂ’Hanlon, CSIS & Brookings, 2006, Hard Power: The New Politics of National Security, p. 144-5 [robin]
Equally distressing, the surprise victory of Hamas in 2006 elections in the Palestinian Authority, which gave the group outright control of the parliament and the prime ministership, constitutes a major setback for the Palestine-Israel peace process and for the momentum of the Bush administration ’s democracy-promotion agenda. The Hamas victory is a huge setback for President Bush and the United States, and it shows that a more sophisticated, patient doctrine is needed. Democracy promotion should never be equated with simple support for elections—which can translate into a tyranny of the majority. It is essential to build respect for minority and individual rights as well as for nonviolence. As Martin Indyk, former assistant secretary of State for the Near East and former US ambassador to Israel, put it, “Democracy cannot be the
antidote to terror if the terrorists use democracy to gain advantages against us, and yet that is what is happening. Promoting democracy, in the end, means asking people who hold absolute or near-absolute power to take steps that may diminish their power or create risks that may lead to
their losing it altogether. As such, it requires extremely adept diplomacy, patience, and a subtle touch (to avoid discrediting reformers in a region where association with the United States is often seen as more bad than good). It also requires firm and principled use of carrots and sticks, an arena in which the Bush administration has been better suited. But in countries where immediate alternatives to current regimes are nonexistent or unacceptable to American interests, and where stark economic or military punishment is not practical, patience and soft power must be married with principle and hard power if the United States is to be effective.
Democracy solves nuclear and biological war, genocide and environmental destruction.
Larry Diamond, Hoover Institution, Stanford University, 12-1995, Promoting Democracy in the 1990s, __http://www.carnegie.org//sub /pubs/deadly/diam_rpt.html__.[robin]
Nuclear, chemical and biological weapons continue to proliferate. The very source of life on Earth, the global ecosystem, appears increasingly endangered. Most of these new an unconventional threats to security are associated with or aggravated by the weakness or absence of democracy, with its provisions for legality, accountability, popular sovereignty and openness The experience of this century offers important lessons. Countries that govern themselves in a truly democratic fashion do not go to war with one another. They do not aggress against their neighbors to aggrandize themselves or glorify their leaders. Democratic governments do not
ethnically "cleanse" their own populations, and they are much less likely to face ethnic insurgency. Democracies do not sponsor terrorism against one another. They do not build weapons of mass destruction to use on or to threaten one another. Democratic countries form more reliable, open, and enduring trading partnerships. In the long run they offer better and more stable climates for investment. They are more environmentally responsible because they must answer to their own citizens, who organize to protest the destruction of their environments. They are better bets to honor international treaties since they value legal obligations and because their openness makes it much more difficult to breach agreements in secret. Precisely because, within their own borders, they respect competition, civil liberties, property rights, and the rule of law, democracies are the only reliable foundation on which a new world order of international security and prosperity can be built.
O3: SOLVENCY
The CDC has ‘real time’ disease surveillance; increasing it to a global position is the only way to solve.
Declan Butler, Senior Reporter at Nature, 3-2-06 (“Disease surveillance needs a revolution” http://www.nature.com/nature /journal/v440/n7080/full /440006a.html) [robin]
The 122-city programme run by the USCenters for Disease Control and Prevention is the only one in the world where disease reports are made in real time, Flahault points out. And such lack of data prevents the field from developing sophisticated models of communicable disease. "It's as if we were trying to study the weather, but collected data only when there was a heatwave or storm," he says. Ward Hagemeijer, the bird-flu programme manager at Wetlands International in Wageningen, the Netherlands, also complains of the general lack of resources. He has been on recent missions to sample H5N1 in affected countries, but says he has been unable to get his African samples sequenced because certified labs have been too busy analysing samples from European outbreaks. Leading light
Another fundamental problem is the lack of strong international leadership: there is no global body able to take overall responsibility for emerging diseases, particularly those that jump to humans from animals. The World Health Organization would be an obvious choice, but although it has a strong remit for public health, it is not responsible for monitoring outbreaks in animals — that duty belongs to the FAO and to the Paris-based World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE). Neither of those organizations traditionally monitors outbreaks from a public-health point of view, however — the FAO is concerned with food safety and the OIE is responsible for trade issues. "Veterinary services throughout the world, particularly in developing countries, are very weak on this. They are not set up to watch for emerging disease events," says Roeder. As well as a lack of expertise, the FAO and OIE do not have the funds for disease surveillance. "We need much more day-to-day interaction with locals on the ground, but we haven't had the resources," Roeder admits. The situation is slowly improving, however. The FAO and OIE had set a target of $102.5 million for fighting flu in Asia, and by the end of 2005, countries had donated just $25 million. But, in January, donors at a Beijing conference pledged $1 billion in grants, and $900 million in loans to support the FAO/OIE Global Strategy for the Progressive Control of Highly Pathogenic Influenza. Many hope that resources pumped into avian flu will benefit the surveillance of emerging diseases generally by strengthening infrastructure. But the money available so far is only a start. And the rate at which new diseases appear — currently around one a year — is increasing. Mark Woolhouse, an epidemiologist at the University of Edinburgh, UK, has analysed all recognized human pathogens and he suggests that this rise is mainly due to changes in land use and the way that people live. Of the 117 emergent human diseases that he has studied, more than half jumped from animals. "The world has to get to grips with the fact that what is happening now is going to happen repeatedly," says Roeder. "We have to develop a global structure to tackle emerging diseases.”
The GDD uses satellites to increase communication and prevent bioterrorism. SES press release, October 2005, (americom government services: to support global disease detection network for the centers for disease control and prevention) http://www.ses.com/ses/siteSect ions/mediaroom/archive/2005 _pub/05_10_05/index.php [robin]
Through the Global Disease Detection initiative, CDC connects medical doctors and researchers around the world to evaluate bioterrorism-associated or emerging infectious diseases. AGS will be provisioning the voice, data and video conferencing services for the network using robust satellite technology to ensure dependable communication for the numerous disparate networks. The network will utilize transponders on SES AMERICOM satellites AMC-12 and AMC-6 with coverage across the Atlantic Ocean and throughout North America.
The US has the technology needed to improve global health internationally
Barry R. Bloom and Harvey V. Fineberg, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Harvard School of Public Health, 1997, Board on International Health, Institute of Medicine, __http://books.nap.edu/html/avi /index.html__. [G. Zhang] Coordination and Leadership. These opportunities for advancing U.S. leadership in global health should take advantage of America's strengths in science and technology to achieve our health goals in a constructive and humanitarian way. Many U.S. government agencies have statutory responsibilities for, and could make major contributions to, global health activities—particularly the Department of Health and Human Services, Department of State, U.S. Agency for International Development, Food and Drug Administration, and the Departments of Defense, Commerce, and Agriculture—and the U.S. role is clearly too complex to be fulfilled by any single agency. However, as noted previously, serious legal and organizational obstacles—fragmentation of governmental responsibilities, divisions of authority between domestic and international health activities, and lack of coordination among U.S. governmental agencies and with the nongovernmental sector—impede progress toward global health. Enhanced coordination of the activities of the many U.S. federal agencies with responsibility for global health; clearer mandates, lines of authority, and responsibility among agencies; and stronger collaboration with the nongovernmental and corporate sectors would enable more cost-effective, productive policies and programs. In addition, there is a fundamental need for strong leadership to coordinate the missions of the agencies within the U.S. government and to integrate this work with the activities of NGOs and international organizations to ensure that the limited resources available to improve global health—including the health of Americans—are used more effectively and efficiently.
O1: INHERENCY
A global health crisis is in the making: 30 new diseases have emerged in the last 20 years: the time for action is now
Jordan Kassalow, Senior Fellow on the Council on Foreign Relations, May 2001, “Why Health is Important to U.S. Foreign Policy,” Council on Foreign Relations and Milbank Memorial Fund, __http://www.milbank.org/reports /Foreignpolicy.html__. [G. Zhang]
There are several reasons to believe that the direct threat to Americans is rising. First, infectious diseases that once appeared to be well controlled are resurgent globally. This can be attributed to factors including a global breakdown in public health infrastructure, increased environmental degradation, and increased urbanization. In the past 20 years, approximately 30 new diseases have emerged, including HIV/AIDS, Ebola virus, hepatitis C, Hanta virus (in the southwestern U.S.), and the virulent "flesh-eating" version of Group A streptococcus. Simultaneously, several of humanity's oldest and most lethal scourges—tuberculosis, malaria, and cholera—have gathered strength. For example, in 1999 there were 8.4 million new cases of tuberculosis worldwide, up from 8 million in 1997 (Vidyashaankar 2001). Six infectious diseases—HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, pneumonia, diarrheal infections, and measles—account for half of all premature deaths worldwide (World Health Organization 1999). In total, 54 million people died of infectious diseases in 1998.
Lack of resources is the main problem is Surveillance
Nsubuga et al, Licensee BioMed Central Ltd, 2-27-02 (http://www.pubmedcentral.nih .gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid =140011#b14)
Contributions that were identified and attributable to the presence of AFP surveillance programs indicate that polio-eradication programs have gone beyond a purely vertical approach (i.e., disease-specific) toward one that is more horizontal (i.e., systems development). Improvements of infrastructure, capacity building, and provision of personnel can be used to develop the overall surveillance system for infectious diseases as long as the categorical program policies clearly support this approach. A lack of resources (e.g., staff, funds, vehicles, or fuel) were the main constraints to infectious disease surveillance that were identified in the survey – interestingly, training was not identified as a top constraint, possibly indicating that trained personnel already exist, at least within the AFP surveillance program. Managers of categorical programs are often uneasy regarding entrusting others with gathering surveillance data that are crucial to targeting and evaluating their programs. Therefore, ongoing training monitoring and periodic external evaluations should provide the quality assurance and credibility that integrated surveillance and response programs will need to reassure managers that they are basing decisions on reliable information.
Thus, the Plan:
The United States Federal Government should fund the CDC to create and expand disease surveillance centers and satellites in sub-Saharan Africa through GDD.
O2: THE ADVANTAGES
A1: EMERGING DISEASES
Disease surveillance is vital to controlling infectious diseases
Mark S. Smolinski et al, Margaret A. Hamburg, and Joshua Lederberg, Committee on Emerging Microbial Threats to Health in the 21st Century , 03, Microbial Threats to Health: Emergence, Detection, and Response. [Ogi]
The need to strengthen global infectious disease surveillance is vital. As noted earlier, in addition to the United States’ humanitarian objective of aiding countries in crisis, it is critical to U.S. national security that quality population-based data on disease burden and trends in the developing world be obtained through global surveillance (Hyder and Morrow, 2000). Yet disease burden estimates and projections are often based on only fragmentary data (Murray and Lopez, 1997). The reality in many developing societies is that deaths and births are not recorded, and a formal system of medical care is unavailable to most of the population (Cooper et al., 1998). Health care infrastructures that lack simple diagnostic tests for diseases such as tuberculosis or that have insufficient resources to perform diagnostic tests add to the lack of knowledge of disease burden. Developing countries in which high proportions of the population experience morbidity and/ or mortality from infectious diseases may be the least likely to be encompassed by official statistics because of this lack of resources. Basic health indices, such as death rates or causes of death, are unknown in such contexts. Health ministries may generate health reports, but the data are generally unreliable. Such numbers have been used as the basis for broad policy recommendations; if the numbers are incorrect, however, the resulting policies can be damaging. In addition to monitoring disease burden, surveillance efforts should be expanded and diversified to include the capacity to recognize previously unknown illnesses or unusual outbreaks of disease that may have global significance. With today’s rapid and often mass global movements of people, animals, and goods, the transnational spread of infectious diseases can occur quickly and easily. Global surveillance, especially for newly recognized infectious diseases, is therefore crucial in responding to and containing microbial threats before isolated outbreaks develop into regional or worldwide epidemics. U.S. agencies have been working with WHO and other partners to achieve the goal of a comprehensive global surveillance system, and efforts to date are aptly described as creating a “network of networks” (see Figure 4-1). In Europe, countries have made significant progress through the development of networks such as those for travel-related Legionnaires’ disease, enteric organisms (Enter-net), and drug resistance. The United States has also supported efforts to establish regional networks. An example is DOD’s support for laboratory-based surveillance in the 21 countries of the Caribbean Epidemiology Center, in collaboration with the Pan American Health Organization and CDC. Likewise, CDC and others have worked in many areas to assist regional surveillance networks. Examples include the Amazon and Southern Cone networks, which encompass eight laboratories.
Control of diseases is critical to ensure there is no economic collapse, terrorist attacks or poverty.
Roger Breeze, keyway speaker at the Manchester Conference, 3-14-07 (http://www.warmwell.com /06feb10breezetalks.html) [robin gray]
A manifesto for global livestock epidemic disease eradication in our lifetimes. Since 1999, there have been devastating epidemics of foot and mouth disease (FMD) in Taiwan and the United Kingdom - at a total cost of some $40 billion - hog cholera in the Netherlands and Rift valley fever in Saudi Arabia and Yemen, along with lesser outbreaks of FMD in Japan, South Korea, Russia and the European Union: all these countries are normally free of these diseases. These epidemics were caused by introduction of infected animals or animal products from the many other countries in South America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia that are persistently infected with FMD and other dangerous animal diseases, some of which also infect humans. In these countries, dramatic outbreaks of disease are unusual - instead, insidious infections limit or prevent international trade, sap the animal agricultural economy and contribute to the persistence of hunger and poverty. These reservoirs of infection also hang like swords of Damocles over the livestock industries, wildlife populations and rural communities of the European Union, Australia, New Zealand and North America that are totally susceptible to accidental or deliberate introduction of disease, as we saw so recently in the United Kingdom. Yet despite efforts to strengthen inspection and interdiction at national borders and emergency responses internally, the United Kingdom, the European Union and the United States are no more secure today from an outbreak of FMD than they were before the recent catastrophes. And they will not be truly secure until these disease threats have been eradicated or controlled at their sources in South America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. Developed nation policymakers and their constituencies have not realized that their best defense at home is disease eradication abroad, that the means to eradicate and control these diseases are now available and that disease elimination will spur international trade, reduce poverty and promote economic development over more than half the globe. This is the moment to persuade North America, the European Union, Australia and New Zealand that their national security and economic interests coincide with those of less-developed nations. We can protect and improve the health of livestock and the economic security of people all over the world by applying the ingenuity and focus of the private sector to seemingly intractable international animal disease problems of the highest importance for which solutions would have lasting global benefits. It is in the self-interest and national security of developed nations to assist in global disease eradication to protect their own economies against natural infection and terrorist attacks, to promote economic development and unrestricted trade, to complement new global public health programs and to reduce hunger and poverty.
Poverty is a Form of Structural Violence that is Equivalent to an Ongoing Nuclear War and is the Root Cause of All Other Violence
Gilligan, 96(James, professor of Psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School, Director of the Center for the Study of Violence, and a member of the Academic Advisory Council of the National Campaign Against Youth Violence. Violence: Our Deadly Epidemic and its Causes.. P. 191-196 )
The deadliest form of violence is poverty. You cannot work for one day with the violent people who fill our prisons and mental hospitals for the criminally insane without being forcible and constantly reminded of the extreme poverty and discrimination that characterizes their lives. Hearing about their lives, and about their families and friends, you are forced to recognize the truth in Gandhi’s observation that the deadliest form of violence is poverty. Not a day goes by without realizing that trying to understand them and their violent behavior in purely individual terms is impossible and wrong-headed. Any theory of violence, especially a psychological theory, that evolves from the experience of men in maximum security prisons and hospitals for the criminally insane must begin with the recognition that these institutions are only microcosms. They are not where the major violence in our society takes place, and the perpetrators who fill them are far from being the main causes of most violent deaths. Any approach to a theory of violence needs to begin with a look at the structural violence in this country. Focusing merely on those relatively few men who commit what we define as murder could distract us from examining and learning from those structural causes of violent death that are far more significant from a numerical or public health, or human, standpoint. By “structural violence” I mean the increased rates of death, and disability suffered by those who occupy the bottom rungs of society, as contrasted with the relatively lower death rates experienced by those who are above them. Those excess deaths (or at least a demonstrably large proportion of them) are a function of class structure; and that structure is itself a product of society’s collective human choices, concerning how to distribute the collective wealth of the society. These are not acts of God. I am contrasting “structural” with “behavioral violence,” by which I mean the non-natural deaths and injuries that are caused by specific behavioral actions of individuals against individuals, such as the deaths we attribute to homicide, suicide, soldiers in warfare, capital punishment, and so on. Structural violence differs from behavioral violence in at least three major respects. *The lethal effects of structural violence operate continuously, rather than sporadically, whereas murders,suicides, executions, wars, and other forms of behavioral violence occur one at a time. *Structural violence operates more or less independently of individual acts; independent of individuals and groups (politicians, political parties, voters) whose decisions may nevertheless have lethal consequences for others. *Structural violence is normally invisible, because it may appear to have had other (natural or violent) causes. [Continued… (9 Paragraphs Later…)] The finding that structural violence causes far more deaths than behavioral violence does is not limited to this country. Kohler and Alcock attempted to arrive at the number of excess deaths caused by socioeconomic inequities on a worldwide basis. Sweden was their model of the nation that had come closes to eliminating structural violence. It had the least inequity in income and living standards, and the lowest discrepancies in death rates and life expectancy; and the highest overall life expectancy in the world. When they compared the life expectancies of those living in the other socioeconomic systems against Sweden, they found that 18 million deaths a year could be attributed to the “structural violence” to which the citizens of all the other nations were being subjected. During the past decade, the discrepancies between the rich and poor nations have increased dramatically and alarmingly. The 14 to 18 million deaths a year caused by structural violence compare with about 100,000 deaths per year from armed conflict. Comparing this frequency of deaths from structural violence to the frequency of those caused by major military and political violence, such as World War II (an estimated 49 million military and civilian deaths, including those by genocide—or about eight million per year, 1939-1945), the Indonesian massacre of 1965-66 (perhaps 575,000) deaths), the Vietnam war (possibly two million, 1954-1973), and even a hypothetical nuclear exchange between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. (232 million), it was clear that even war cannot begin to compare with structural violence, which continues year after year. In other words, every fifteen years, on the average, as many people die because of relative poverty as would be killed by the Nazi genocide of the Jews over a six-year period. This is, in effect, the equivalent of an ongoing, unending, in fact accelerating, thermonuclear war, or genocide, perpetrated on the weak and poor every year of every decade, throughout the world. Structural violence is also the main cause of behavioral violence on a socially and epidemiologically significant scale (from homicide and suicide to war and genocide). The question as to which of the two forms of violence—structural or behavioral—is more important, dangerous, or lethal is moot, for they are inextricably related to each other, as cause to effect.
Malaria decreases Africa’s labor force, crippling their economy
Jeffrey Sachs and Pia Malaney, February 7 2002. Center for International Development, John F. Kennedy SCHOOL OF Government, Harvard University, “The economic and social burden of malaria,” Insight Review Articles, __http://www.rbm.who.int/cmc _upload/0/000/015/330/415680a _r.pdf__. [G. Zhang]
Industries such as tourism are particularly hard hit by malaria transmission, as is becoming clearer in countries such as Mozambique and South Africa as they attempt to encourage investment in these areas with limited success. Investments in all sorts of production — in mining, agriculture and manufacturing — may similarly be crippled if the labour force faces a heavy disease burden, or if the burden raises the costs of attracting the needed labour to a malarious region. In an economic era in which international trade and finance is critical for economic development, these adverse effects on foreign trade and investment are likely to be of tremendous macroeconomic importance.
More economic instability due to new diseases will cause an African nuclear war
Dr. Jeffrey Deutsch, PhD in Economics from George Mason University, November 18, 2002, http://www.rabidtigers.com/
The Rabid Tiger Project believes that a nuclear war is most likely to start in Africa. Civil wars in the Congo (the country formerly known as Zaire), Rwanda, Somalia and Sierra Leone, and domestic instability in Zimbabwe, Sudan and other countries, as well as occasional brushfire and other wars (thanks in part to "national" borders that cut across tribal ones) turn into a really nasty stew. We've got all too many rabid tigers and potential rabid tigers, who are willing to push the button rather than risk being seen as wishy-washy in the face of a mortal threat and overthrown. Geopolitically speaking, Africa is open range. Very few countries in Africa are beholden to any particular power. South Africa is a major exception in this respect - not to mention in that she also probably already has the Bomb. Thus, outside powers can more easily find client states there than, say, in Europe where the political lines have long since been drawn, or Asia where many of the countries (China, India, Japan) are powers unto themselves and don't need any "help," thank you. Thus, an African war can attract outside involvement very quickly. Of course, a proxy war alone may not induce the Great Powers to fight each other. But an African nuclear strike can ignite a much broader conflagration, if the other powers are interested in a fight. Certainly, such a strike would in the first place have been facilitated by outside help - financial, scientific, engineering, etc. Africa is an ocean of troubled waters, and some people love to go fishing. Asia is a close second, due to the competition of major powers. For example, in an Indo-Paki confrontation, China may be tempted to side with Pakistan, since China and India are major nuclear powers sharing a long border. However, the Asian powers are basically stable internally, at least for now. The things to watch for are domestic economic and political instability in a nuclear power, the spread of nuclear weapons to new countries and new national antagonisms and great-power ties either weak or nonexistent enough to enable opportunistic alliances and destabilization, or strong enough that the great powers feel compelled to follow their client states.
A2: BIOWEAPONS
Disease surveillance will preclude the rise of bioterrorism by nipping diseases like SARS in the bud
Tom Davis, Committee on Government Reform, April 25, 2006, 109th Congress of the House of Representatives, Report 109-436, “Strengthening Disease Surveillance, __http://frwebgate.access.gpo .gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname �3�109_cong_reports&docid�4�f :hr436.pdf__” [G. Zhang]
The spread of the H5N1 virus and the threat of pandemic influenza is the most recent reminder of the need for sensitive, vigilant disease surveillance. In 2002, the world conducted an involuntary,
live-fire exercise of public health capacity against bioterrorism. Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome [SARS] emerged from the microbial hothouse of the Far East through the same vulnerabilities and
vectors terrorists would exploit to spread weaponized, genetically altered disease. The global response to SARS underscores the vital significance of sensitive disease surveillance in protecting public health from natural, and unnatural, outbreaks. It also discloses serious gaps and persistent weaknesses in international and U.S. health monitoring.
Bioweapons threaten extinction
Richard Ochs, former Director of the Maryland Safe Energy Coalition, 6/9/02, “Biological Weapons Must Be Abolished Immediately”, **__http://www.freefromterror.net /other_articles/abolish.html__**. [G. Zhang]
Of all the weapons of mass destruction, the genetically engineered biological weapons, many without a known cure or vaccine, are an extreme danger to the continued survival of life on earth. Any perceived military value or deterrence pales in comparison to the great risk these weapons pose just sitting in vials in laboratories. While a "nuclear winter," resulting from a massive exchange of nuclear weapons, could also kill off most of life on earth and severely compromise the health of future generations, they are easier to control. Biological weapons, on the other hand, can get out of control very easily, as the recent anthrax attacks has demonstrated. There is no way to guarantee the security of these doomsday weapons because very tiny amounts can be stolen or accidentally released and then grow or be grown to horrendous proportions. The Black Death of the Middle Ages would be small in comparison to the potential damage bioweapons could cause. Abolition of chemical weapons is less of a priority because, while they can also kill millions of people outright, their persistence in the environment would be less than nuclear or biological agents or more localized. Hence, chemical weapons would have a lesser effect on future generations of innocent people and the natural environment. Like the Holocaust, once a localized chemical extermination is over, it is over. With nuclear and biological weapons, the killing will probably never end. Radioactive elements last tens of thousands of years and will keep causing cancers virtually forever. Potentially worse than that, bio-engineered agents by the hundreds with no known cure could wreck even greater calamity on the human race than could persistent radiation. AIDS and ebola viruses are just a small example of recently emerging plagues with no known cure or vaccine. Can we imagine hundreds of such plagues? Human extinction is now possible.
The CDC should take the lead in preventing bioterrorism
Tom Davis, Committee on Government Reform, April 25, 2006, 109th Congress of the House of Representatives, Report 109-436, “Strengthening Disease Surveillance, __http://frwebgate.access.gpo .gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname �5�109_cong_reports&docid�6�f :hr436.pdf__” [G. Zhang]
The threat of bioterrorism as well as new emerging diseases such as SARS makes it imperative local and state public health departments are modernized and disease surveillance is strengthened. The CDC is responsible for providing ‘‘national and international leadership in the public health and medical communities to detect, diagnose, respond to, and prevent illnesses including those that occur as a result of a deliberate release of biological agents,’’ and is therefore responsible for setting this timeframe.6
A3: TERRORISM
US international health efforts are the most effective counter-terrorism measure
Richard Horton, October 6, 2001, “Public health: a neglected counterterrorist measure,” The Lancet, Vol. 358, Issue 9288, http://www.sciencedirect.com /science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi �9�B6T1B-444R2FT-2&_user�10�4257664 &_coverDate=10%2F06%2F2001& _rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search& _sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000022698 &_version=1&_urlVersion=0& _userid=4257664&md5=bcb89e59cca 7501e401678a414aa1a3d. [G. Zhang]
Terrorism is a consequence of wider political and social change. Terrorism thrives especially in countries enduring state failure. Afghanistan, Colombia, Northern Ireland, Sudan, the Palestinian territories, Iraq, and Algeria all harbour terrorist groups. All have varying degrees of state failure, where states exist. The current US response to Afghanistan fails to recognise this reality. Military escalation, the language of retaliation, and possibly even covert strikes have been the main elements of American foreign policy. Bush has also asked for “the cooperation of citizens within Afghanistan who may be tired of having the Taliban in place”.__3__ This incitement to overthrow the existing government is a disappointingly crude attempt at nation-building, especially given the humanitarian disaster facing Afghanistan. What is missing? Medicine and public health have important if indirect parts to play in securing peace and stability for countries in collapse. Health could be the most valuable counterterrorist measure yet to be deployed.
African terrorism is growing more severe – apocalypse imminent
Princeton N. Lyman and J. Stephen Morrison, January-February 2004, “The Terrorist Threat in Africa,” Foreign Affairs, __http://www-stage.foreignaffairs .org/20040101faessay83108 /princeton-n-lyman-j-stephen -morrison/the-terrorist-threat -in-africa.html?mode=print__. [G. Zhang]
At the same time, however, the United States has failed to recognize the existence of other, less visible, terrorist threats elsewhere on the African continent. Countering the rise of grass-roots extremism has been a central part of U.S. strategy in the Middle East, but the same has not generally been true for Africa. In Nigeria, for example, a potent mix of communal tensions, radical Islamism, and anti-Americanism has produced a fertile breeding ground for militancy and threatens to tear the country apart. South Africa has seen the emergence of a violent Islamist group. And in West and Central Africa, criminal networks launder cash from illicit trade in diamonds, joining forces with corrupt local leaders to form lawless bazaars that are increasingly exploited by al Qaeda to shelter its assets. As the war on terrorism intensifies in Kenya and elsewhere, radicals might migrate to more accessible, war-ravaged venues across the continent.
The Bush administration must deal with these threats by adopting a more holistic approach to fighting terrorism in Africa. Rather than concentrate solely on shutting down existing al Qaeda cells, it must also deal with the continent's fundamental problems -- economic distress, ethnic and religious fissures, fragile governance, weak democracy, and rampant human rights abuses -- that create an environment in which terrorists thrive. The United States must also eliminate the obstacles to developing a coherent Africa policy that exist in Washington. Counterterrorism programs for the region are consistently underfinanced, responsibilities are divided along archaic bureaucratic lines, there is no U.S. diplomatic presence in several strategic locations, and long-term imperatives are consistently allowed to be eclipsed by short-term humanitarian demands. The war on terrorism might make officials realize what they should have known earlier: that Africa cannot be kept at the back of the queue forever if U.S. security interests are to be advanced.
Terrorism causes extinction
Kirkus Reviews, 1999, -Terrorism-
Fanaticism-Arms-Destruction/dp /product-description/0195118162 . [robin]
Terrorism is nothing new. Fanatical groups have been wreaking havoc from time immemorial. Today two things have changed that together transform terrorism from a nuisance'' to one of the gravest dangers facing mankind.'' First terrorists be they Islamic extremists in the Middle East, ultranationalists in the US, or any number of other possible permutations seem to have changed from organized groups with clear ideological motives to small clusters of the paranoid and hateful bent on vengeance and destruction for their own sake. There are no longer any moral limitations on what terrorists are
willing to do, who and how many they are willing to kill. Second, these unhinged collectivities now have ready access to weapons of mass destruction. The technological skills are not that complex and the resources needed not too rare for terrorists to employ nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons where and when they wish. The consequences of such weapons in the hands of ruthless, rootless fanatics are not difficult to imagine. In addition to the destruction of countless lives, panic can grip any targeted society, unleashing retaliatory action which in turn can lead to conflagrations perhaps on a world scale. To combat such terrorist activities, states may come to rely more and more on dictatorial and authoritarian measures. In short, terrorism in the future may threaten the very foundations of modern civilizations. On all of this, Laqueur is quite convincing. Useful, too, is his elaboration on the nature of the various terrorist threats we face. Yet he too often falls back on questionable, if not offensive, opinion. He asserts, for instance, that in non-Western countries ``human lives count for less,'' and so the danger of terrorism in these countries is greater. This is simply unacceptable doggerel. Useful in pointing out the terrorist danger, but be wary of the author's more outlandish pronouncements.
A4: DEMOCRACY
US global health assistance increases its soft power leadership
Ilona Kickbusch, Ph.D at Yale University School of Medicine and the World Health Organization, November/December 2002, Health Affairs: The Policy journal of the Public Health Sphere, __http://content.healthaffairs .org/cgi/content/full/21/6/131__. [G. Zhang]
In his recent analysis of U.S. foreign policy, Joseph Nye, dean of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, argued that the United States must come to terms with what he calls the paradox of American power: The stronger the United States is, the more it must orient itself toward a new global community. It must rely less on traditional measures of power such as military strength and more on the "soft" power that comes from culture, values, and institutions.1 This differentiation between hard and soft power has been a major subtext of all discussions on America’s role in the new global environment since the fall of the Berlin Wall and in particular in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
In the face of a global health crisis, Nye’s paradox can help to define a new role that America can play. This role would imply strengthening the U.S. soft-power role in health by moving beyond both a national-interest paradigm and an international disease-control model based on macroeconomic arguments. A key dimension of this new global health strategy would be to address the larger issues of social justice, democracy, and law that are paramount to health in the context of globalization and that are part of U.S. political tradition. The global community expects the United States to take soft-power leadership. The repeated suggestion of a new Marshall Plan or the call to contribute more generously to the new Global Fund on AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria is not just about more dollars. It is the plea of the global community that the United States apply the strength of vision and determination that it has shown in other historical crises to health and development today.2
Soft power is key to democracy promotion
Kurt M. Campbell & Michael E. OÂ’Hanlon, CSIS & Brookings, 2006, Hard Power: The New Politics of National Security, p. 144-5 [robin]
Equally distressing, the surprise victory of Hamas in 2006 elections in the Palestinian Authority, which gave the group outright control of the parliament and the prime ministership, constitutes a major setback for the Palestine-Israel peace process and for the momentum of the Bush administration ’s democracy-promotion agenda. The Hamas victory is a huge setback for President Bush and the United States, and it shows that a more sophisticated, patient doctrine is needed. Democracy promotion should never be equated with simple support for elections—which can translate into a tyranny of the majority. It is essential to build respect for minority and individual rights as well as for nonviolence. As Martin Indyk, former assistant secretary of State for the Near East and former US ambassador to Israel, put it, “Democracy cannot be the
antidote to terror if the terrorists use democracy to gain advantages against us, and yet that is what is happening. Promoting democracy, in the end, means asking people who hold absolute or near-absolute power to take steps that may diminish their power or create risks that may lead to
their losing it altogether. As such, it requires extremely adept diplomacy, patience, and a subtle touch (to avoid discrediting reformers in a region where association with the United States is often seen as more bad than good). It also requires firm and principled use of carrots and sticks, an arena in which the Bush administration has been better suited. But in countries where immediate alternatives to current regimes are nonexistent or unacceptable to American interests, and where stark economic or military punishment is not practical, patience and soft power must be married with principle and hard power if the United States is to be effective.
Democracy solves nuclear and biological war, genocide and environmental destruction.
Larry Diamond, Hoover Institution, Stanford University, 12-1995, Promoting Democracy in the 1990s, __http://www.carnegie.org//sub /pubs/deadly/diam_rpt.html__.[robin]
Nuclear, chemical and biological weapons continue to proliferate. The very source of life on Earth, the global ecosystem, appears increasingly endangered. Most of these new an unconventional threats to security are associated with or aggravated by the weakness or absence of democracy, with its provisions for legality, accountability, popular sovereignty and openness The experience of this century offers important lessons. Countries that govern themselves in a truly democratic fashion do not go to war with one another. They do not aggress against their neighbors to aggrandize themselves or glorify their leaders. Democratic governments do not
ethnically "cleanse" their own populations, and they are much less likely to face ethnic insurgency. Democracies do not sponsor terrorism against one another. They do not build weapons of mass destruction to use on or to threaten one another. Democratic countries form more reliable, open, and enduring trading partnerships. In the long run they offer better and more stable climates for investment. They are more environmentally responsible because they must answer to their own citizens, who organize to protest the destruction of their environments. They are better bets to honor international treaties since they value legal obligations and because their openness makes it much more difficult to breach agreements in secret. Precisely because, within their own borders, they respect competition, civil liberties, property rights, and the rule of law, democracies are the only reliable foundation on which a new world order of international security and prosperity can be built.
O3: SOLVENCY
The CDC has ‘real time’ disease surveillance; increasing it to a global position is the only way to solve.
Declan Butler, Senior Reporter at Nature, 3-2-06 (“Disease surveillance needs a revolution” http://www.nature.com/nature /journal/v440/n7080/full /440006a.html) [robin]
The 122-city programme run by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is the only one in the world where disease reports are made in real time, Flahault points out. And such lack of data prevents the field from developing sophisticated models of communicable disease. "It's as if we were trying to study the weather, but collected data only when there was a heatwave or storm," he says. Ward Hagemeijer, the bird-flu programme manager at Wetlands International in Wageningen, the Netherlands, also complains of the general lack of resources. He has been on recent missions to sample H5N1 in affected countries, but says he has been unable to get his African samples sequenced because certified labs have been too busy analysing samples from European outbreaks.
Leading light
Another fundamental problem is the lack of strong international leadership: there is no global body able to take overall responsibility for emerging diseases, particularly those that jump to humans from animals. The World Health Organization would be an obvious choice, but although it has a strong remit for public health, it is not responsible for monitoring outbreaks in animals — that duty belongs to the FAO and to the Paris-based World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE). Neither of those organizations traditionally monitors outbreaks from a public-health point of view, however — the FAO is concerned with food safety and the OIE is responsible for trade issues. "Veterinary services throughout the world, particularly in developing countries, are very weak on this. They are not set up to watch for emerging disease events," says Roeder. As well as a lack of expertise, the FAO and OIE do not have the funds for disease surveillance. "We need much more day-to-day interaction with locals on the ground, but we haven't had the resources," Roeder admits. The situation is slowly improving, however. The FAO and OIE had set a target of $102.5 million for fighting flu in Asia, and by the end of 2005, countries had donated just $25 million. But, in January, donors at a Beijing conference pledged $1 billion in grants, and $900 million in loans to support the FAO/OIE Global Strategy for the Progressive Control of Highly Pathogenic Influenza. Many hope that resources pumped into avian flu will benefit the surveillance of emerging diseases generally by strengthening infrastructure. But the money available so far is only a start. And the rate at which new diseases appear — currently around one a year — is increasing. Mark Woolhouse, an epidemiologist at the University of Edinburgh, UK, has analysed all recognized human pathogens and he suggests that this rise is mainly due to changes in land use and the way that people live. Of the 117 emergent human diseases that he has studied, more than half jumped from animals. "The world has to get to grips with the fact that what is happening now is going to happen repeatedly," says Roeder. "We have to develop a global structure to tackle emerging diseases.”
The GDD uses satellites to increase communication and prevent bioterrorism.
SES press release, October 2005, (americom government services: to support global disease detection network for the centers for disease control and prevention) http://www.ses.com/ses/siteSect ions/mediaroom/archive/2005 _pub/05_10_05/index.php [robin]
Through the Global Disease Detection initiative, CDC connects medical doctors and researchers around the world to evaluate bioterrorism-associated or emerging infectious diseases. AGS will be provisioning the voice, data and video conferencing services for the network using robust satellite technology to ensure dependable communication for the numerous disparate networks. The network will utilize transponders on SES AMERICOM satellites AMC-12 and AMC-6 with coverage across the Atlantic Ocean and throughout North America.
The US has the technology needed to improve global health internationally
Barry R. Bloom and Harvey V. Fineberg, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Harvard School of Public Health, 1997, Board on International Health, Institute of Medicine, __http://books.nap.edu/html/avi /index.html__. [G. Zhang]
Coordination and Leadership. These opportunities for advancing U.S. leadership in global health should take advantage of America's strengths in science and technology to achieve our health goals in a constructive and humanitarian way. Many U.S. government agencies have statutory responsibilities for, and could make major contributions to, global health activities—particularly the Department of Health and Human Services, Department of State, U.S. Agency for International Development, Food and Drug Administration, and the Departments of Defense, Commerce, and Agriculture—and the U.S. role is clearly too complex to be fulfilled by any single agency. However, as noted previously, serious legal and organizational obstacles—fragmentation of governmental responsibilities, divisions of authority between domestic and international health activities, and lack of coordination among U.S. governmental agencies and with the nongovernmental sector—impede progress toward global health. Enhanced coordination of the activities of the many U.S. federal agencies with responsibility for global health; clearer mandates, lines of authority, and responsibility among agencies; and stronger collaboration with the nongovernmental and corporate sectors would enable more cost-effective, productive policies and programs. In addition, there is a fundamental need for strong leadership to coordinate the missions of the agencies within the U.S. government and to integrate this work with the activities of NGOs and international organizations to ensure that the limited resources available to improve global health—including the health of Americans—are used more effectively and efficiently.